SELFBUILDER SURVEY: BUILDING A LOW CARBON HOME
Government action Condemnation followed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s autumn 2023 U-turn on a raft of key climate pledges, when he announced that the UK needs a more ‘pragmatic and realistic’ approach to net zero targets which eases the ‘burden on British people’. It’s not just climate change protestors who argue that Sunak’s decisions to scrap key climate change pledges put in place by previous administrations are short-sighted. Many eco-aware architects and sustainable building experts fervently believe that his policies, including scrapping fines on landlords who do not upgrade their properties to an EPC C or higher by 2025, and a watering down of the ban on new gas boilers (now postponed to 2035), will reverse years of good work to reduce our country’s carbon emissions from the built environment.
Tighter Regs It’s not just in recognition of higher summer temperatures in the UK – with the hottest day of 2023 recorded as 33.2°C (91.8°F) at Kew Gardens, south-west London in September – that the
Future Homes Standard now includes a regulatory requirement to mitigate overheating, and for homes to have adequate means of cooling. A new Building Regulation, Part O, will ensure that more energy efficient homes are not subject to overheating as a result, and that an adequate method of cooling is provided. This marks an interesting shift in priorities, coming in the wake of homes becoming more airtight following Part L of Building Regulations, introduced in 2013. Although Part L has achieved much in creating buildings which perform much better on energy use, there is clearly a need for balance. Our self-builders now face the challenge of achieving an optimum internal temperature year-round, and meeting two differing Parts of the Building Regulations, which may take some settling down to work together. ‘Achieving natural ventilation’ and ‘airtightness’ are already the top two Building Regulations challenges for our survey respondents, with 43% and 35% respectively finding these demands ‘moderately challenging.’
How are you addressing potential overheating?
The Future Homes Standard In 2025, the Government has said that all new homes will need to meet its new Future Homes Standard. That means that in under two years, carbon emissions produced by all new homes will need to be 75-80% lower than those built to the previous Building Regulations. In June 2022, an interim standard was introduced by way of an update to Part L, which demanded a 31% reduction in carbon emissions from any new home being built, through a combination of low carbon heating and improved fabric. Essentially, this means
including higher levels of insulation and higher standards of airtightness and ventilation. The Future Homes Standard sets a framework for self-builders embarking on a low carbon build, and prepares the ground for an ambitious future in which fossil fuels will be phased out entirely, the electricity grid decarbonised and heating will become largely electric, with a shift towards heat pumps and district heating networks.
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www.sbhonline.co.uk
nov/dec 2023
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